"I Am the Night" Rewatch: "On Leather Wings" and "Christmas With the Joker"

Batman: The Animated Series

I've had an almost lifelong love of comic books that has only grown as I've gotten older. The first movie that I remember clearly seeing in theaters was Tim Burton's "Batman" in 1989. I was six years old. That was the spark that really got me going. For a long time, I was all about the Dark Knight. "Batman" was just the beginning. Then, there was "Batman Returns" which I loved even more than the first, mainly because of Catwoman. 

The premiere of "Batman: The Animated Series" on September 6, 1992 was the thing that cemented my forever love of Batman and to this day is the best presentation of the character as far as I am concerned and I'm sure it's the same for anyone who grew up watching the show. When I'm reading a Batman comic it's Kevin Conroy's voice I hear in my head when Batman speaks or Mark Hamill's when The Joker is detailing his latest evil scheme. It's not just them. It's any of the iconic voices that voice casting director Andrea Romano introduced us to. 

This year marks the 25th anniversary of "Batman: the Animated Series" so I thought now would be the perfect time to revisit the show and review each episode. The plan is to do two episodes per blog post. I'll be counting double episodes as one so I can get each part in the same post. I'm also going to be going through the episodes in DVD order, which I believe is production order, rather than air date. I also know that people have strong opinions about this beloved series and these reviews are going to be super subjective. I encourage anyone who reads these to comment, question, etc., just be respectful. This is just my opinion. So, here we go.

X-Position: Halfway There

The Gifted: Episode 2, "rX"
The Gifted: Episode 3, "eXodus"
The Gifted: Episode 4, "eXit strategy"
The Gifted: Episode 5, "boXed in"

Ugh. I know guys. I'm the worst. I fall behind on episodes and then these fall behind. It's like a domino effect. So, instead of going over each episode individually, let's take a look at how the season is shaping up so far now that we are at the midway point.

Star Trek for Dummies: Boldly Going

Star Trek: Discovery: Episode 3, "Context Is For Kings"

Aaahhh!! I know! I'm so behind. I'm the worst. I'm going to make lots of excuses. Life, etc, blah, blah, blah. I am not going to make any false promises, like this will never happen again, because we all know that it will. I will try to be better. Without further adieu, let's dive right in.

X-Position: The Gifted Series Premiere Recap

The Gifted, Episode 1: "eXposed"

Considering that the first X-Men film came out in 2000, it's been a long road to get Marvel's Merry Mutants any live action play on the small screen. They have seen quite a bit of success in animated form, from the 90's animated series, which gets a small audio shout out in tonight's series premiere, to "X-Men Evolution" to the more recent "Wolverine and the X-Men." Prior to the debut of FX's mind-bending "Legion" last year, the only true mutant property to get the live-action small screen treatment was "Generation X" and the less said about that disaster the better. 

I've already watched one comic book pilot stink up my television screen in less than a week, "Marvel's Inhumans" I'm looking directly at you, so I was a little trepidatious when I fired up this first episode. After spending an hour with this show, it looks as if, the wait for more flesh and blood X-characters on television was well worth it.

Star Trek for Dummies: Necessary Backstory?

Star Trek: Discovery: Episode 2, "Battle at the Binary Stars"

One thing I failed to mention when I was talking about the first episode of this prologue were the lens flares. Oh the lens flares. After taking a hiatus during "Star Trek: Beyond" they are back in full force. I didn't notice them so much in this episode, but they are pretty distracting and unnecessary. This isn't a JJ Abrams production.

The title of this episode also reminded me of that old '70's/80's show, "Battle of the Network Stars." I kept waiting for the cast of "The Big Bang Theory" to show up and challenge the crew and the Klingons to a three-legged space race, followed by a tug of war.

Marvel's Inumans Premiere React: Inhumanly Bad

Marvel's Inhumans, Episodes 1/2: "Behold... The Inhumans; "Those Who Would Destroy Us"

Before we jump into what happened tonight on the two hour premier of "Marvel's Inhumans," let's flashback a moment to the halcyon days of 2014. In October of that year, Marvel held a press conference to announce their planned Phase Three films. We heard about Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok and the Infinity War Films. They also announced Inhumans. That's right. In case you had forgotten, Inhumans was supposed to be a part of Phase Three. It made sense at the time. The Inhumans are very similar to mutants and it was understandable that Marvel would want to find mutant adjacent characters that they could work into their cinematic universe since 20th Century Fox would not be releasing their hold on the mighty mutants anytime soon.

During the second season of ABC's "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD," which premiered about a month prior to this press conference, the Inhumans made their debut. I remember it struck me as a tad odd that Marvel would debut the Inhumans on this show that was pretty far from a ratings smash and then transition it to the big screen. It wasn't long before the film was pulled from Marvel's release schedule and then last year it was announced that Inumans would be a television show with the double sized premiere being shown in IMAX theaters a month before it's network debut. 

Early buzz has not been great. People were not impressed by the on set photos, Medusa's wig, the trailer, Medusa's wig, reactions from an early Comic-Con showing were abysmal, Medusa's wig, poor special effects and did I mention Medusa's wig? Throughout all this, I hoped that maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I thought it was going to be. Well, it premiered tonight, I just finished watching and spoiler alert....

Star Trek for Dummies: The premiere of Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek: Discovery, Episode 1: "The Vulcan Hello"

As nerds, geeks, dorks, whatever term you choose, I feel like when it comes to certain fandoms we all have our blind spots. I'll admit that I have two big ones. The first being "Doctor Who." I promise Doctor loving friends who may read this, I will get through Christopher Eccleston's season sometime before I die. Maybe. Actually, scratch that. No promises. 

The other was "Star Trek." When I was younger, I definitely gravitated towards the other sci-fi franchise with "Star" in the name. There was just something about a farm boy with a destiny, James Earl Jones, a scoundrel and a princess that really appealed to me. I didn't have anything against "Star Trek" but I just never got into it and when I have tried to step into it, the amount of material just feels really overwhelming. 

I'm not totally ignorant to the world of the Trek. It has become so immersed in our popular culture that even people who haven't followed it are familiar. I know about Vulcans and Tribbles and the Federation. I can name most of the cast of TNG and the OG. I know about Spock. I've seen all of the rebooted movies and enjoyed them for the most part. The less said about "Into Darkness" the better. I've even seen a few of the original movies and the ones featuring the TNG cast. Although, "Star Trek: Insurrection" is the first movie I remember walking out during the middle of, so maybe the less said about those the better.

When I heard that CBS was bringing the Star Trek franchise back to television with involvement from Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, American Gods) one of my favorite writer/producers, I thought that this was the perfect time to jump in. Fuller ended up leaving the project after clashing with CBS, but his broad story outline remained. After hearing more about the diverse cast, I decided that I was still going to give it a go and now the time has come. I thought it would be fun to write about the show from the perspective of someone new to the series, so here we go. The first episode of "Star Trek: Discovery."